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W* It

ioi3 SYRIA

•S 65 AND

1 ' IE HOLY LAN

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRESENTED BY
THE PUBLISHER

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND /

VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH

IDS

107.3

SYRIA AND THE
HOLY LAND

BY I ' ;

VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH

KT. f M.A., D.D., LITT.D.> F.B.A.
PBINCIPAL OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY

Author of "Historical Geography of the Holy Land,"
"Jerusalem: the Topography, Economics, and History,"
"The Early Poetry of Israel," etc.

WITH t MAPS

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE HISTORY 5

THE NAMES 9

BOUNDARIES — EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL .... 12

THE COAST 15

THE MARITIME PLAIN 17

THE WESTERN RANGE 20

THE ORONTES-JORDAN-ARABAH VALLEY 26

THE EASTERN RANGE 29

THE DISCREDITED TURK 35

THE DUTIES OF HIS SUCCESSOR 36

THE RECOVERY OP THE LAND 37

THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN 40

THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 44

RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS 51

ECONOMIC QUESTIONS 52

THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AREA 53

THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA 57

EPILOGUE 60

3361H1.

MAPS

8YEIA, MESOPOTAMIA AND ADJACENT LANDS . . FfOntispim
PALESTINE, ANCIENT AND MODERN . . . At end of book

SYRIA AND THE
HOLY LAND

THE HISTOET

SYKIA, chiefly because she includes Phoenicia and
Palestine, has been of greater significance to man-
kind, spiritually and materially, than any other single
country in the world.

The home of two of the monotheisms which have spread
round the earth, and close neighbour to that of the third,
Syria holds sites sacred to them all, and is still the resort
of their pilgrims from nearly every nation under the sun.
To the farthest Christian the land is almost as familiar as
his own; his Bible is her geography from Beersheba to
Antioch, and her history from Abraham to Paul, Above
all, she is the land of his Lord's Nativity, Ministry, Cross
and Resurrection; for the traditional scenes of which
Christian sects have fought with each other or held a jeal-
ous truce under the contemptuous patronage of the Turk.
To the J ew and the Mohammedan equally with the Chris-
tian, Jerusalem is "The Holy City." The Rock, from
which rose the great Altar in front of the Temple of
Israel, is for the heart of the Moslem the spot on which
bis Prophet prayed, and inferior in sanctity only to the
Kaaba of Mecca. In Hebron, the J ew, the Christian, and
the Mohammedan have, each in his turn, built and dedi-
cated the Sanctuary which covers the tombs of the com-

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

mon Fathers of their Faiths. The nerves of all three re-
ligions still quiver in the soil of Syria, and sometimes
round the same stones. We can feel the acuteness of the
problems which thus arise in her administration. They
have been complicated by the political envies and in-
trigues of half Asia and all Europe.

Nowhere else has so much history run into or through
so narrow a space. The storm-centre of the Ancient East,
the debatable ground between its rival Empires in Mesopo-
tamia and on the Nile, and between their Greek successors,
the Seleucids and Ptolemies, Syria was for three thou-
sand years the field upon which their civilisations clashed,
mingled and found a common deflection to the West by the
islands of the Mediterranean. Open eastward to Arabia,
Syria has drawn the substance of her populations from the
hordes which that fertile mother but indigent nurse of
men is ever ready to foist upon the comparative abun-
dance of her neighbours. The slender Syrian fringes to-
wards the desert, over which at other times those hordes
have easily drifted, were built by the Eomans into the
eastern Limes of their Empire ; and within this bulwark
the land flourished to the aspect of a second Greece. Syria
similarly served the Byzantines.

On the decay of the Byzantine Empire she formed the
first prey of the Moslem conquerors (634-640 a.d.), pro-
vided for nearly a century the seat of the Khalifate
(661-750), relapsed between the African and Asiatic rivals
for that office into her old debatableness for three cen-
turies more, and then for the second time became, as she
was predestined to be, the field of decision between the
Cross and the Orescent. The Frankish kingdom of J eru-
salem lasted for only eighty-eight years (1098-1187), yet
its relics are almost as numerous on the land to-day as
those of the Roman Empire. Gradually all Syria fell

THE HISTORY

>ack to the Mohammedans, and in 1517 became a province
>f the Turkish Empire, since when she has had hardly any
tnnals save the marks of her steady decay.

In 1799 Napoleon, in his ambition to conquer Asia,
marched from Egypt up the coast as far as Esdraelon,
3ut was forced back the following year. From 1832
1840 southern Syria came under the power of
Mohammed Ali, ruler of Egypt, but was recovered by
the Turks with British assistance. In 1860 another
French army, disembarking at Beyrout, liberated the
Christians of Lebanon, secured for them under European
guarantees a separate administration with a Governor
of their own faith, and laid to Damascus the first good
road the land had known since the Romans left.

The military history of Syria may be pictured as the
procession of nearly all the world's conquerors: —
Thothmes, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib and
Nebuchadrezzar; ^Cambyses and Alexander; Pompey,
Caesar, Augustus, Titus and Hadrian; Omar and Saladin;
Tamerlane; Napoleon. And now again she is one of
the fronts on which two ideals of civilisation and empire
oppose their arms, but with issues more momentous for
humanity than were ever fought out on these same fields
between Semite and Greek, Rome and the East, or Frank
and Saracen.

Nor do religion and war exhaust her importance to
the world. Syria bred and endowed the people who first
brought the fruits of Eastern * civilisation to Europe,
taught the nations the value of sea-power, and set them
an example in transmarine commerce and the planting of
colonies.

Phoenicia gave Europe the alphabet (whatever the
sources of this may have been) and some of the finer
handicrafts, contributed at intervals to the food of its

•

6YBIA AND THE HOLY LAND

peoples, or fumiflhed 1&em wifh IsxnxaeB, or inffrtari
them with her own superstitions and tkjbb. Her jluuuui,
bowls aad weibs are snug by Samec. Hebrew and Greek
writers ^ecLsixa like wealth of Hwanidan i&dnstrieB and
the siae and like range of Phmrririim ships. Long before
tibe C&ristiaii era these gaiters Lad passed the Straits of
Gibraltar as far at least as the Canaries and ScQlies;
aod had sailed down the Bed Sea and along the east
coast of Africa* The Phoenician markets drew ivory,
scented woods, silk and other stuffs from India and
China, and passed them to the west. Conversely Chinese
writings of an early time rate the products of Syria, which
they call Ta-tein, above even those of Babylon. The
incense of southern Arabia readied the temples of Greece
and Italy through the port of Gaza.

It was the same in the earlier Mohammedan era. The
Arab geographers, besides praising the fertility of Syria—
her corn, flax and wool, her oil, wine and figs, all in-
digenous, and her adopted rice, maize, sugar, cotton,
indigo, oranges, and citrons — magnify her exports west-
ward, not only of these products but of porcelain, silks,
and other fabrics from the Far East, Those were the
times when in the bazaars of Aleppo goods were said to
be gold daily to the amount of £10,000. From Syrian
harbours the ships of Genoa, Pisa and Venice carried
cargoes not only to Italy and Spain, but after the Crusades
to the coasts of the Low Countries, and so started the pros-
perity of Antwerp, Bruges and other towns of north-
western Europe. At most times the land has as much
deserved the name of "Mediterranean" as that sea on
which her harbours open, and of whose waves she was the
first mistress.

All the languages of Europe bear marks of the Syrian
commerce. The Greek words "arrabon," interest,

THE NAMES

ia," a weight, and "kabos," a measure; "klobos," bird-
f, with the names of several animals and vegetables;
ae add "Biblos," from the port that exported the
prus) ; "chalkos kuprios," from which our copper is
ved; "Tyrian purple" and "Sidonian looms";
rian" as lie synonym for banker in Gaul in the fifth
ury; "Jericho balsam"; "damson," "damask,"
nascene," and the French "damasquinure" ; the
iaeval "charta Damascena," a cotton-paper; "cotton,"
f; "mohair" and "moire," from "muhayyar," the
)ice" stuffs of Antioch; "muslin" from Mosul, but
ugh Aleppo; "Latakia"; "carat" (through Arabic,
Lgh previously from the Greek) ; "camlet," "saffron"

"civet"; "sherbet," "sorbet" and "syrup," and the
ctuaire d'Acre"; probably "sugar," "candy," "lemon"

"orange" (if not through Spain) ; the "shalot" from
alon, the "carob" or locust-bean ; "lute" (Arabic el-'ud)

"rebeck," "ammiral," "arsenal" and "douane" — are
e reminders of what Syria has scattered out of her
to the extremes of Europe, or handed over from the
Dsite confines of Asia.

hese proofs at once of her fertility and of her supreme
mtage of position are lavish everywhere in her history,
>pt under Turkish rule, and are pledges of the pos-
[ities of her future when the hands of the Turk shall
ist have been lifted from her suffering soil.

THE NAMES

EFORE we examine the form of the country a few
words are needed upon its nomenclature. The
ies, both general and local, have always been elastic,
tching and shrinking by turns or even sometimes

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

springing to a distance from their original sites. For thi
there are two reasons: the frequency of foreign rule an
the migrations of the natives. In ignorance or for tl
convenience of administration conquerors have altera
the areas of the wider names, while the popular usaj
preserved their original limits or but slowly followed ti
official example. And in course of migration due to wai
famine or pestilence the inhabitants of villages, and eye
of towns, have removed the names of these to their Be
settlements. It need hardly be added that in their eage
ness to locate Biblical scenes hosts of guessing pilgris
have further confused the nomenclature of the Holy Lan

We owe the name Sybia to the Greeks. Traditic
describes it as an abbreviation of Assyria. But it
more probably derived from Suri, the Babylonian nan
for Mesopotamia with Asia Minor as far as the Halys ai
with an uncertain extension south of the Euphrates. 1
partial conformity to this the Greeks may at first hai
meant by Syria everything between the Caucasus an
Egypt But the name shrank south of the Taurus ai
Euphrates; and the Boman province of Syria was bounde
by that range and river on the north, the Levant on i
west, the desert which is Arabia on the east, and the Wa<J
el'-Arish — the frontier of Egypt — on the south. To I
westerners and to the native Greeks this practically is t
Syria of to-day. The Arabs call it esh-Sha, "The Lef
or North of the Arabian Peninsula, corresponding
el- Yemen, "The Eight" or the South.

From the first three adjectives were added .to disti
guish the main divisions of the country. Coele — or H
low — Syria, originally the Orontes valley and the grt
trench between the Lebanons, was thence loosely stretch
over all southern Syria except Phoenicia and then (as
Boman times) restricted to Anti-Lebanon and the regie

THE NAMES

beyond Jordan. Phoenician Syria and Philistine, or
Palestine, Syria, were the two coastal regions inhabited by
those peoples. But first in Greek and thence in other
European languages these adjectives became nouns —
Phoenicia and Palestine. By a curious diversity of
fortune, while the former remained within its original
limits on the coast from a little south of Carmel north-
wards, Palestine was carried east and north till it covered
the land to the foot of Lebanon and over Jordan to the
desert. This is perhaps a unique instance of the gradual
application to almost the whole of a country of the name
of a tribe who never occupied more than a fraction of its
surface and had already disappeared from its history.

The name Canaan — Kena'an, also Kna' — perhaps
meaning "Lowland," is confined by Babylonian documents
of the fourteenth century B.C. to Phoenicia, but in the
form Kenahhi was used by Egyptians of the maritime
plain from Gaza northwards. Thence, like "Palestine,"
it stretched both in Hebrew and Christian use over all the
country south of Lebanon. In the Old Testament Canaan-
ite means sometimes Phoenician, sometimes any of the
tribes on the plains, as distinguished from those on the
hills, and sometimes covers all the inhabitants whom
Israel found in the land; while "the lip of Canaan" was
the one language spoken in Palestine of which Phoenician,
Hebrew and Moabite were little more than dialects.

The name of another ancient tribe, the Amorites, is
applied by some Old Testament writers to the inhabitants
before Israel of the Western Kange and of part of the
Eastern, by others to all the pre-Israelite peoples and by
Babylonian documents to Western Palestine as a whole.
In the English Old Testament the names "Syria" and
"Syrians" render the Hebrew Aram, the designation of
the fourth Semitic race which, with Phoenicians, Hebrews

12 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

and Arabs, has seriously contested the possession of
country. Sometimes in ancient literature the n
Arabia included Syria, just as the Turkish 'Arabi
still does ; but Arabia is properly everything to the s<
and east of Syria.

BOUNDARIES — EXTERNAL AND INTERNA

THE natural boundaries of Syria have been stal
N., the Euphrates and the Taurus Range; W.,
Levant; E., the Arabian Desert; and S., the Desert
Egypt, on a line drawn from Raf a or el'Arish to the h
of the Gulf of Akaba. These enclose some 400 miles
and S. by 70 to 100 W. and E.

The form of the land may be generally described
on five parallel lines running N. and S. between the
and the Desert, as shown below.

Sea.

The
Coast.

The
Maritime

Plain
(partial).

- The
Western
Range.

The
Orontes-
Jor dan-
Arab ah-
Valley.

The
Eastern
Range.

Dese

But these lines are neither regular nor uniform. E
has modifications of direction, of level and of charac
which give the surface of the land a complicated vari
and have always divided its populations both politic*
and economically. Like Switzerland, Syria has wit
herself natural frontiers more definite than some of tb
which separate her from the neighbouring countries. 1

OUNDARIES— EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL 13

ich cross-divisions are to be emphasised above the rest,
ot becauSfc they are the greatest (for they are not), but
ecause they effect a convenient partition of Syria into
iree provinces.

The first is just N. of Tripoli, where the Western
iange is cleft by the Nahr el-Kebir, which sharply dis-
nguishes the Nusairiyeh portion of the range from the
rebanons ; as the Eleutherus of the Greeks, this river f re-
uently formed a political frontier. And the second is
ust N. of Tyre, the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh, which also cleaves
le Western Eange separating Lebanon from the hills of
klilee and then bends N. into the Beka' or valley between
le Lebanons, while its main direction W. to E. is fairly
Dntinued over J ordan by the foot of Anti-Lebanon round
y Damascus. There are thus three distinct divisions:

1. Northern Stria:

From the Taurus to the Nahr el-Kebir.

2. The Lebanons: with Damascus.

3. Palestine :

From the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh to the W. el-'Arish.

This last is further divided by the Plain of Esdraelon,
iterrupting the Western Range and affording a broad
ccess from the coast to the Jordan Valley and Eastern
Palestine, but seldom an effective border; and by Mount
'armel, shooting over from the Western Range to the sea
nd separating Esdraelon from the Maritime Plain, but
ever either a military or a political frontier. The rest
E the Western Range passes imperceptibly from the hills
ad valleys of Samaria to the compact tableland of Judaea,

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

along which it is separated from the Maritime Plain b;
the lower but distinct range of the Shephelah; smt
descends very gradually upon what the Hebrews called th
Negeb.

Nor has even that most singular feature of the eartM
surface, the Orontes- Jordan Valley, continued by tfy
Arabah to the Bed Sea, proved a strong frontier, excepl
at its deepest part where it is filled by the Dead Sea. Fd
the fertility of the party of it called the Beka' linfe
rather than divides the Lebanons ; the upper J ordan ani
its lakes have not always separated Galilee from JaulaJ
and Hauran; generally Gilead and sometimes even Moa
belonged to Samaria, and under the Turks Gilead at leai
has been administered from Nablus; while, further soutl
the ancient Edom lay on both sides of the Arabah an
to-day the same Arab tribes pasture their flocks in eac
region at different seasons.

On the Eastern Bange, which rises only south of tl
Nahr el-Kebir, there is across Anti-Lebanon a high vallc
or pass (4,500 feet) that gives access from the Bet
to Damascus down the course of the Abana. The souther
skirts of Hermon, falling steeply to the tableland <i
Hauran, mark a border between different forms of cultufl
and a demarcation convenient for minor political pui
poses, but they are not a real frontier. The volcani
Hauran again is separated from the limestone Gilead 1j
the abrupt rift through which the Yarmuk flows, a
ethnic and political border nearly always in ancient time
Gilead's hills pass imperceptibly into the plateau of Moa
as Samaria's into that of Judaea, but on the south of Moa
there are two successive trenches, the Wady Mo jib, tl
ancient Arnon 2,000 feet deep, and the Wady el-Hesi lfl
deep and abrupt, both of which have proved historic*
frontiers.

THE COAST

In any political re-distribution of Syria all these fea-
tures must be taken into account

THE COAST

T N general the Coast is one of the straightest in the
world, with no deep estuary or gulf (save at the ex-
treme north), and no protecting island of any size. But
the part of it south of Mount Carmel differs substantially
from that to the north. From Carmel to the Delta of the
Nile is a stretch of sandhills and low rocks, with the
mountains well back from the sea, and no broad river
mouth or other natural harbour. The prevailing winds
are from the S.W., and, with strong sea-currents from the
same direction carrying the Nile mud, have always tended
to silt up the outlets of the small streams, and the one
or two artificial harbours, which like Herod's Caesarea
have been urged upon so inhospitable a shore. Alexander
wisely built his great port at the west instead of at the
east or Pelusiac end of the Delta. At Carmel and north-
wards, where the hills draw to the coast, short capes jut
out, there are bays, sheltered some from two directions,
some from only one; and a few islets form harbours
sufficient for the largest ships of antiquity.

We see why the Phoenician power gathered and flour-
ished just here, for besides the protection for shipping the
sands are rife with materials for glass, and the shallow
waters teem with fish, sponges, and the murex, the source
of the purple; metal and timber once abounded in the
hills, and round or through these there is access to the
grain fields of the interior, and to Damascus and Aleppo.
How humble the beginnings of Phoenicia were may be
perceived from the names of its towns: Akka perhaps

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THE MARITIME PLAIN 17

be north by a cape; it prospered in the early Christian
-eriod as the port of Antioch, and still carries on a con-
iderable trade in tobacco, sponges and silk. Ruins and
choked harbour are all that remain of Seleucia,
•Jitioch's previous port in Greek times. Lastly, Alexan-
iretta, the safest and most convenient harbour on the coast
lit troubled with fever, commands an import and export
rade of the combined vplue of three millions sterling;
aland it traffics with Aleppo, and is to be, if it is not
Iready, connected with the Baghdad railway.

THE MARITIME PLAIN

rHE second of the parallel lines on which Syria is
disposed, is not continuous. Virtually confined to
le south of Mount Carmel with a few miles more to
le north, the maritime plain dwindles to a ribbon between
^ebanon and the sea, and recovers only in patches along
le rest of the coast. But its breadth south of Carmel
► of the highest importance to Syria from both a military
ad an economic point of view, especially if we take along
ith it the short range of the Shephelah or "low hills,"
lich intervenes between the plain and the abrupt table-
aid of Judaea.

On the extreme south, eight or ten sandy marshes from
^ypt, stands Gaza, "the vestibule of Syria," and the
srt and market of the Arabs of the southern desert,
hence to Carmel spread some of Syria's most fertile
3lds, and across them runs the main highway of her war
id traffic. This keeps well inland so as to avoid the sands
marshes of the coast, and passes the Philistine towns
hich flourished on its trade but suffered from the armies
bom its clear course has attracted both north and south,

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

as well as from the plagues which it has frequently carrie
out of Egypt.

This level and famous stage of the route between tl
Nile and Mesopotamia might compass Carmel either 1
the sea or (as most armies and caravans have preferred
by one of three easy parses through the low hills betwec
Carmel and the western range, on to Esdraelon; wheat
their march might continue either coastwise by ti
Phoenician cities or inland across Jordan (whether soul
or north of the Lake of Galilee) to Damascus, and sol
the Euphrates. On the maritime plain this road is bless*
with fairly sufficient water, and there are no great natuu
obstacles, but it is exposed, as most invaders by it hai
experienced, to attacks down the various valleys ai
slopes which fall from the Western Eange.

The Maritime Plain is very fertile. Philistia ai
Sharon with the wider valleys, that debouch upon tha
from the hills, bear good wheat, millet, vines, orange
citrons, and flourishing vegetables. Date-palms do m
in the south, and the olive is as fruitful as anywhere «
the limestone hills of the Shephelah, on which also barlq
fields are numerous. But these proofs of the capacity <
the soil render only more obvious the waste, the want <
public utilities and the poverty of the native peasantr
The German and Jewish colonies which have been plant
since 1868 and 1870 respectively, are convincing eviden
of the wealth everywhere possible to industry and a litl
science, were there only a government which dealt just
with the cultivator and assisted his toil by proper road
irrigation and drainage. The Germans, from Wiirtte
burg and of the Temple sect, introduced better metho
of agriculture in the belief that the Lord would cornel
the land, when it was made ready for Him; and tl
example of their practice if not of their faith has bfll

THE MARITIME PLAIN

followed more powerfully by Jewish settlers, driven from
eastern Europe by persecution, but equipped by capitalists
of their own creed. The Germans have two colonies,, one
by Jaffa and one at Haifa under Mount Carmel, whose
slopes their industry has converted into vineyards not
unlike those of the Ehine or the Neckar.

Of the forty-five to fifty Jewish settlements in Pales-
tine since 1870 — said to have contained before the war
some 13,000 people — there are ten or eleven near Jaffa
and southward, and others on the southern slopes of Car-
mel — altogether with a membership of over 6,000. The
improvements they have effected in spite of the obstruc-
tions of the government and the agricultural inexperience
of most of the settlers, have been wonderful, as the present
writer can testify from a knowledge of their progress
since 1880.

They have doubled, and in some cases, trebled the
annual yield of the acres they cultivate. They have laid
down new roads. They have introduced new stocks of
fruit, and by researches at their experimental station
are said to have developed varieties of grain and fruit
fitted to withstand the sirocco and other rigours of the
climate. They have reduced the fevers of some swampy
districts by a lavish planting of eucalyptus, known to the
Arabs as "the Jews' tree." In part they have overcome
the menace of the drifting sands of the coast. Their
exports of wine to Europe had already become consider-
able. The influence of their example upon the native
peasantry may be appreciated.

Esdraelon, which carries the same conditions of fertility
almost as far inland as Jordan, is in its western half one
vast wheat field: now partly the property of the Sultan
and partly that of a wealthy Greek family. But I under-

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

stand that just before the war a Jewish colony or two had
been planted on its margin.

THE WESTERN RANGE

THE mountain-ranges of Syria present an extraor-
dinary variety of height and of surface. From the
heated coasts and valleys at their skirts they rise in parts
to over ten thousand feet, at which in that latitude the
snow seldom disappears. Besides the natural terraces j
afforded by the limestone structure of their slopes, the j
ranges contain an unusually large proportion of high val- .
leys and table-lands of considerable fertility, buttressed or
surmounted by steep bare ridges. From all this have
arisen many facts of political and economic importance.

The mountains of Syria have not only been the last of
her lines to fall to foreign invaders — except in the singular
case of Israel. Throughout her troubled history they have
also been the refuges of the more independent and there-
fore intelligent and enterprising elements of her native
population. And both in the Greek Period and in modern
times they have attracted settlers from the west. There-
fore, we find on them to-day a great variety of the smaller
races and sects. There is often a less scattered population,
with more people to the square mile, than on some of the
richer plains below. And while in parts agriculture and
industry flourish, in parts also these have been pushed up
to levels where nature gives them little encouragement, and
the only reason why men should live and labour on such
shelves is the absence of security below. Since 1880
there has been a considerable emigration from the Syrian
mountains to America and Australia. When Syria once
more enjoys a just government there may follow by migra-

THE WESTERN RANGE

tion to the plains a still further abandonment of some of
the loftier levels on which agriculture is now precariously
pursued.

All this is especially true of the Western Range. \

Starting (as has been said) from the Taurus, the West-
ern Range runs, as the Giaour Dagh, south to the Orontes
and close to the coast on a general height of from four
to six thousand feet, but with loftier peaks. This was
the Mons Amanus of the ancients, the boundary between
Syria and Cilicia, and its chief pass (by Beilan) was
known as the Syrian Gate. Its slopes are favourable to
the vine and other fruits, parts are covered with ever-
green, oaks, and firs; streams abound, and the range is
crossed by roads from Alexandretta to Antioch and Aleppo,
the Beilan pass still the easiest

South of the Orontes, the range bears the name Jebel
en-Nusairiyeh, till its next break in the valley of the Nahr
el-Kebir. Besides the bare Jebel Akra it consists of a
series of limestone hills clothed with pines, oaks, and
various shrubs, and of valleys with clear streams, strips
of corn-land and olive orchards. There is much good
grass. The inhabitants, not Semitic but of the Iranian
type, and practising a variety of the Mohammedan re-
ligion, mixed with Pagan and Christian elements, have an
evil reputation, but are said by travellers to cultivate their
lands and parts of the neighbouring plains with a care and
neatness beyond other natives of Syria. They live in scat-
tered hamlets.

South of the Nahr el-Kebir the range bears the name of
Lebanon to the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh, just north of Tyre,
a length of 105 miles. It rises from the narrow coast by
steep slopes, buttresses and shoulders with many terraces,
natural and artificial, that are cultivated to heights of
four, five, or even six and seven thousand feet, and it is

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

dotted with villages and monasteries. Wheat is said to
grow tip to 6,000 feet, and vines from 3,000 to nearly
5,000 feet, with olives still higher. There are many other
fruit trees, bat the principal culture is that of the mul-
berry, grown for the production of silk cocoons. It k
reported that in the Lebanon and the vilayet of Beyrout
there were 132 steam spinning factories with 2,250 looma,
and that Beyrout annually shipped to Marseilles raw silk
and cocoons to the value of £800,000. Silk is also wovei
in the mountain for native use.

Above and behind these cultivated zones Lebanon risa
to a high bleak ridge, bare or dotted with pines and shrofy
which shuts out the east, and by its loftiness exercises t
powerful influence on the climate, not only of the slopes
below but of the whole of southern Syria. The summiti
of the ridge are Jebel Makmal and Dahr el-Kodib above
the Cedars (both just over 10,000 feet), Jebel Muneitrt
and Jebel Sannin (over 9,000). From this ridge the easfc
side of the range falls steeply, with but few villages and
far less cultivation than on the west, into the Beka*. The
Lebanon is crossed by several roads including that from
Tripoli by the famous Cedars to Baalbek over a height
of 7,000 feet, and by two lower passes, that on which the
road and rail from Beyrout to Damascus cross the range
at about 5,000 feet, and that by Baruk slightly lower.

South of Lebanon and the cleft of the Nahr el-Kasi-
miyeh are the highlands of Galilee, of which Northern or
Upper Galilee is undulating tableland surrounded by hills
from 2,000 to 4,000 feet high, and Southern or Lower
Galilee, parallel ranges below 1,900 feet with broad val-
leys between them, and a few depressions under 500 feet
Both Galilees are very fertile. There is profusion of
bush and scattered woodland, proofs of the possibilities
of afforestation, some vines, olives, and stretches of arable

THE WESTERN RANGE

ground. In ancient times "no part lay idle" ; the olives
were said to be easier to cultivate here than elsewhere in
Syria, and the villages and towns were frequent. Under
good government there might be great wealth in Galilee,
in a climate singularly happy.

South of these highlands the Western Range suffers its
greatest separation (as already noted) in the Plain of
Esdraelon, which rises little above sea-level between the
coast and its open descent to the Jordan.

South of Esdraelon the Western Range rises again in
the hills and high valleys of Samaria, or Mount Ephraim.
From summits of 3,000 feet and a watershed averaging
2,000, it descends on the Maritime Plain by a gentle slope
for the most part sterile with infrequent breaks of olive-
groves and a few villages. The fall of the eastern flank is
deeper and far more rapid, but it relaxes in several broad,
fertile valleys. Within these flanks the Mount surprises
the visitor by the number of its small plains, meadows
and vales, from one of which, the Makhneh, east and south-
east of Nablus, comes some of the finest wheat in Syria;
the olives and other fruits are excellent. A shallow pass
cleaves these highlands, that which crosses between Ebal
and Gerizim, and holds Nablus at its centre. Nablus, the
ancient Shechem, is the natural capital of Palestine in a
very fertile district, with easy roads both to the coast that
is only twenty-six miles off, and to the fords of Jordan that
are not eighteen. In olden times Shechem or its successor
and neighbour, the city of Samaria, held Gilead and even
Moab in its power, and the Turkish Government for long
administered from Nablus a great part of eastern Pales-
tine.

The Samarian highlands slowly close and slightly rise
to the compact plateau of Judsea, about 2,000 feet high,
little more than thirty-five miles long from Bethel to the

£4

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

south of Hebron, and from fourteen to eighteen h
from its edge above the Shephelah to where on the
the level drops below 1,200 feet and into desert. Ju<
consists largely of stony moorland with rough scrub
thorns, but after the winter rains there is considerabli|8e
herbage. Sometimes it is less stony with a little wheat
more barley. Sometimes it breaks into shallow glens m\
olives, figs and terraces of vines. There is no
water. Ancient records, and the ruined terraces on
glens and in the defiles leading down to the west, testUBp
that once even this, the least attractive part of all
Western Eange, enjoyed much greater fertility,
olive thrives nowhere better than at the level, and on
limestone, of Judaea. Both in the Jewish and the earl
Moslem eras oil and wine were abundant.

The Bible emphasises the pastoral character of Judaea,
and many of its greatest personalities have been shepfi
herds; yet its cattle are small, and its people used
covet the bulls and rams of Bashan and of Gilead. N<
are there here any of the physical conditions of a greal
city — neither river nor trunk road nor convenient mark*
for the surrounding peoples. Moab is shut off by thi
great gulf of the Dead Sea ; and the Arabs of the southern]
deserts resort to Gaza rather than to Hebron. But
very aloofness of Judaea guaranteed her security for longef]
periods than was the case with her sister Samaria, kept!
her people more free of alien influences, and while con-
centrating the national mind gave it greater opportunity
of observing the fates of other peoples and the course of
history. Jerusalem, though a tolerable fortress, is not a
natural but a spiritual creation.

The narrow plateau of Judah reaches its southern edge
a little to the south of Hebron and thence the range roll*.]
gently down in broad ^undulations, through which the

THE WESTERN RANGE «5

dy Khulil winds, to Beersheba. There is still consid-
3le farming as far as Dhoheriyah, the ancient Debir,
.e eleven miles from Hebron, with a few springs, pools,
in the rainy season even streams. From Dhoheriyah
ieersheba is a slope, much less fertile, of about sixteen
33 more. This forms as easy an approach to Judaea
any, and during the Jewish Exile its villages were
lually overrun by an Edomite drift from the south-
;. Yet it was seldom, if ever, used by invaders with
plateau as their objective ; for to the south of it across
Negeb lie east and west the steep and haggard ridges
;he desert, while the plains of Philistia, even though
j offer but few and narrow avenues to Jerusalem, have
ays been more attractive, for one reason or another,
1 to the desert nomads and to armies from Egypt.
?he Negeb, as the Hebrews called it, the Parched Land
he name is wrongly rendered "the South" in the author-
l version of the Old Testament — begins about Dhoheri-
. with the decrease of fertility and, falling from about
30 feet to (in parts) 500 above the sea, extends to
le twenty miles beyond Beersheba. Save in patches
i is a region of apparently sterile soil with wadies that
iry for the greater part of the year, but under the rains
denly brim with torrents. For centuries the Negeb has
i no settled life save about the wells of Beersheba, and
\ only in recent years. Arab nomads sow fractions of
vrith barley or millet and reap the most meagre of
ps, which south of the Wady Sheriyah are said to fail
illy every third year. But the ruins of many villages —
ae of them small towns with a careful architecture —
i of terraces indicative of cultivation, which mostly
e from the Byzantine period, prove that even the Negeb
\ its possibilities under a good government. The wasted
iter floods could be stored, and there are probably many

£6

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

wadies in which water might be drawn by digging fori
But so long as insecurity prevails, wells are unprofitable

THE ORONTES-JORDAN-ARABAH VALLEY

THE fourth of the parallel lines of Syria is part of
great "fault" extending from Armenia to the G
of Akaba on the Red Sea, and containing the deep
trench on the earth's surface. This begins at Lake Hul
which is just 7 feet above sea-level, falls to the Dead S
whose surface is 1,292 feet below the sea, and its botti
1,300 lower still, and rises again to the sea-level M
thirty-five miles further south in the Arabah.

We may start with this line in the neighbourhood
Antioch, where the Orontes (present name el-'Asi) leat
it to cut through the Western Range to the sea. B
is a broadish plain, el-Amk (the TTnki of the Assyrian
none of it 600 feet above sea-level and extremely ii
The ancient prosperity of Antioch, to which vast ro
still testify, was due only in part to this fertility; i
rest came from through-traffic to the Levant, most
which 'was long ago lost. Erom Antioch the valley of 1
Orontes ascends very slowly between the Western Rai
and the edge of the high plateau of N. Syria ; the rri
of ancient townships — averaging, it is said, one to the n
— are proofs of its natural resources and melancholy p
tests against the incompetence of the Turkish Goy$
ment.

At Hama (Hamath, 1,015 feet), an administrai
centre with 80,000 inhabitants, good grazing lands, ml
f actures of cloth and leather, and considerable trade 1
the Arabs of the neighbouring desert, the valley is read
by the Aleppo railway, which it carries on to the Bel

THE ONONTES-JORDAN-ARAB AH- VALLEY 27

Further on, from Horns (Emesa, 1,660 feet), also a mar-
ket for the Beduin, with rich gardens and fields and a
temperate climate, a railway diverges to Tripoli by the
Nahr el-Kebir, and it is also possible to reach Palmyra
in five days by carriage over the level desert. After
Horns the valley becomes the Beka' or "Cleft" between the
great Lebanons, and, varying in breadth from 6 to 7
miles, rises to over 3,770 feet at the sources of the Orontes
about Baalbek. Large parts of this stretch are hard and
sterile; there are fewer villages and ancient ruins, but
considerable pasture.

About Baalbek is the watershed, streams start south,
the Nahr el-Litani begins. The Beka' becomes very fer-
tile, but even under the western enterprise of recent years
it is only partially cultivated. Its ancient wealth must
have been far greater. Vines and other fruits flourish,
there are good trees and great possibilities for timber,
room and fit soil for wheat, and during most of the year
temperate airs. The breadth is from 8 to 10 miles.

From the S. end of the Beka' the Litani breaks in a
passage of its own to the S.W. and W., to bound (as the
Kasimiyeh) the Lebanon. But we follow the main "fault"
south to where Jordan rises. The land here, about Has-
beya, is singularly rich in olives and vines at a level of
rather over 2,000 feet. Then the descent is rapid through
good wheat lands, once well-cultivated, well-watered
meadows with oaks and other large trees to the marshes
and jungles of papyrus about Lake Huleh (7 feet above
the sea), with a Jewish agricultural colony, and thence
over rugged country to the Lake of Galilee (682 feet below
sea-level). On the N.W. shore of the Lake lies the rich
warm plain of Gennesaret, whose ancient wealth of fruit-
trees and corn might easily be restored by drainage and
irrigation. The fisheries of the Lake have always been

88 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

rich; once the pickled fish carried its name to the markets
of Rome. From the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea
the length of the Jordan Valley is some 65 miles, with
a breadth varying from 3 to 14— most of it good soil save
in the wider bed which the river fills in spring and which
is mainly mud and jungle with a broad margin of dead
marl.

No part of Syria shows more signal proofs of the min*
gled neglect and oppression of the Turk. In the upper
portion about Beisan (Bethshan) flax abounded in the
Roman period — the linen of Bethshan was then famous—
and maize and rice were plentiful in the Mohammedan
era. Lower down, towards Jericho, groves of the date-
palm stretched for miles, there were gardens of balsam
farmed by the Roman Government, and before and during
the Crusades the sugar-cane was cultivated. Wheat grows
well in many parts — up to the stirrups of the rider on the
broad plains opposite Jericho. A large part of the Ghor,
as this stretch of the valley is called, was appropriated by
the last Sultan, and to that Imperial act are due a fe\f
recent improvements in its cultivation.

How much more might be effected by a system of irriga-
tion — less from the J ordan itself, for its bed is deep, than
from its many tributaries — is not hard to estimate. No-
where would irrigation produce swifter or richer results,
for the climate is sub-tropical. Wild plants and fruits
abound in a luxuriance excelled only by some of the
warmest and wettest valleys of East Africa, to the fauna
and flora of which those of the Ghor are said to be akin.
The few permanent inhabitants of this hothouse are (out-
side Jericho) of a blackish, fuzzy-haired, almost negroid
aspect. But both the peasants of Western Palestine and
the Arabs of Moab annually descend to cultivate portions
of the generous well-warmed soil.

THE EASTERN RANGE 89

THE EASTERN RANGE

rHE Eastern range has no counterpart to the two
northmost sections of the Western. It rises from
m Syrian plateau south of Horns, and first opposes Leb-
wn by Anti-Lebanon in almost equal length and height.
Qti-Lebanon falls into two parts divided by a broad
Erteau and the gorge of the Barada or Abana river. To
e north of this is Jebel esh-Sherki, "Eastern Mountain,"
rih no conspicuous summit. On its western flank falling
feeply to the Beka', there is hardly a village. The Wady
Sfchfufeh, which runs up from Reyak in the Beka', carry-
g the railway to Damascus, has a good stream and abun-
vegetation; over the watershed is the prosperous vil-
ge of ez-Zebedani with a fertile plain on the head waters
the Abana. Between the ridges that the Jebel esh-
terki throws out eastward to the desert there are a num-
•r of other brooks and copious springs, beside which some
m 10 villages thrive among their vineyards, fig and
taegranate orchards, meadows, less frequent wheat fields
*d some poplars. But these lands are liable to be overrun
spring by the desert Arabs who exact blackmail when
Sly do not plunder or settle down themselves to sow
«1 reap the fields. For even on these heights may be seen
fct process which from the earliest times has been con-
tut down all the border of the Eastern Range — the
fcdual rise of tribes or of families from the nomadic to
& agricultural level.

"The southern part of Anti-Lebanon, Mount Hermon or
61 Jebel esh-Sheikh (9,050 feet), has more villages on its
totern slopes and fewer on its eastern, with luxuriant
fees to 4,700 feet, and above that scattered oaks and pines
d sometimes a thick bush, with wild but edible fruits.

80 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

Snow falls deep in winter to the lower levels of the mm
tain and hardly disappears in summer from the summiti

But the glory of Anti-Lebanon lies at its feet; its <&
creation is Damascus. The site of this most enduring
cities is defenceless, remote from the sea, and oni
natural line of commerce, well out on the desert,
lies behind as well as in front of it. But the mounts
by gathering the greatest of its waters to a narrow goa
among its barren eastern folds, and then flinging the rii
far out on a lofty drainable plateau (about 2,250 fi
above the sea), has created some hundred and fifty sqfl
miles of exuberant fertility. From this, known as I
Ghuta, rises the oldest, the largest and richest, the ml
steadfast of all the cities of Syria.

Damascus has survived the rise and fall of sevei
systems of religion. She has been harried and held byi
the great empires of antiquity and the Middle Ages, U
has seen them perish. Her only rival in Syria has h
Antioch, and Antioch has decayed while Damascus i
flourishes. In addition to her own fertility, she 1
learned to bend to herself most of the through traffic)
tween the Nile and Mesopotamia; she is the outpost <
civilisation in the Desert, and an indispensable market
the nomads of all Northern Arabia. Before the war 1
population was at least 200,000 with that of her suburl
some rate it at 300,000.

Down the southern slopes of Hermon the Eastern Bai
falls swiftly upon the vast plateau of Hauran, with
hilly neighbours of Jaulan and Jedur above the Lakei
Galilee. The northern levels of Hauran are from 2,(tf
to 3,000 feet above the sea, but on the south the platei
shelves off by broad degrees of about 1,600 and 1,300 ft
to its limit in the deep valley of the Yarmuk. The surfti
is volcanic, its rocks basalt, and its soil a rich, red loll

THE EASTERN RANGE

8 and with very few streams, except where its
n steps yield powerful waterfalls working many
he plateau bears abundant wheat and good pas-
ran wheat is in repute all round the Levant. Even
usecurity to which the Turk for the most part leaves
harvests can be heavy; they reach Damascus or
at at Haifa in long camel caravans or, since 1895,
way. Before the war the annual yield of grain
d to be 320,000 tons. Behind the Roman Limes
t was one of the granaries of the Empire. The
f public works — roads, aqueducts, reservoirs and
itions — are still visible across it A wealth of
md domestic buildings, with numerous inscriptions,
to the continued prosperity of Hauran through the
ine period ; but the inscriptions almost cease from
3 of the Moslem invasion, and the number of aban-
>r half -occupied towns evinces the insecurity which
3ed the country ever since. Recent Turkish admin-
n has somewhat improved matters, but this opulent
e awaits a stronger government in order to become
tie of the food-producing centres of Western Asia,
lie east it is bounded by the rocky fastness of the
low deposit of hard lava some 26 miles by 20, the
at all times of turbulent tribes, and by the Druze-
in with a highly potential but at present a some-
recarious cultivation. This eastern bulwark of
, some 35 miles N. and S. by 20 E. and W., has
age height of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (with
it of 6,000), and gives birth to not a few springs
jams. It bears many ruins of Roman and Greek
ion, and is said to support to-day some 40,000
with a few "Mountain-Arabs," as they are called,
le groups of Christians. Beyond the mountain is

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

the desert — sand steppes and Harms wastes of lava, in ill ft*
greatest of which lies the generous oasis of Ruhbe, odo»k *
Greek and Roman outpost. The desolate steppes onwtt*ke
Hauran runs out to the southeast, before the actual toJLct <
is reached, are rich in the Kali plant, of the ashes of «1»rr
there is a considerable export to the soap-factories of Wefltes
ern Palestine. lie

With the Yarmuk Valley, the Sheriat-el-Menadireh, tbflte
volcanic surface comes to an end and the limestone hills
Gilead begin with an average height of over 3,000 feet ufl&
some summits of 4,000. Their ridges are covered wifll
woods of the evergreen oak and other trees. The valkmti
and occasional plains, watered by numerous springs anlf
streams, hold orchards of pomegranate, apricot and oli*J f
and vineyards with a considerable export of raisins; akol]
not infrequent fields of wheat and barley, especially on tbll,
upper reaches of the Jabbok towards, and in, the country ,
of the ancient Ammonites. But the feature of Gileafs
life which lives most clearly in the traveller's memory ii
the wealth of its herds of cattle, large and small. Fof
Syria, the streams are exceptionally numerous.

Like those of Hauran, the fresh climate and fertility
attracted Greek settlers and colonies of Roman veterans;
and Gilead still shows the imposing ruins of their opulent
cities. The theatres at Gadara and Abila, the long aque-
duct leading thither from Hauran, the columns at Arbeli
and Dion, the theatre, the agora, the colonnaded street!
and the naumachy at Gerasa show how Europeans onoo
prospered and enjoyed life to the full on those last margins
of civilisation towards the desert.

The southern boundary of Gilead towards Moab is as
indefinite as that of Samaria towards Judaea ; but by the
Wady Hesban the hills have ceased to roll, the woods have
died out and we are again on a compact, treeless plateau.

THE EASTERN RANGE

The high limestone table-land of Moab, 2,300 to 3,300
ifeet above the sea, though — unlike the volcanic Hauran —
^broken by ribs and scalps of grey rock, is for the most
*part excellent soil for wheat, which grows richly across its
spacious Btreamless extent without artificial aids, on the
Strength of the heavy rains and snows of winter. Where
wheat is not possible the pasture is good, at least through
the spring and early summer, and lasts still longer in the
deep, well-watered canons that cleave the plateau from the
desert to the Dead Sea.

On the high, fresh moors the paths are all stamped with
the footmarks of sheep and cattle, and in the height of
Bummer you will find droves of them by the perennial
streams in the bottoms of the canons. In ancient times
Moab with Gilead provided meat and cereals for the people
of Western Palestine; and in 1904 the present writer met
corn-brokers from Jerusalem negotiating for the harvests
before they were reaped. Doughty says, not too strongly,
that at Kerak "corn is almost as the sands of the sea."
All this is in spite of the extremely low rate of the popu-
lation to the square mile and of the desert raids to which
the eastern border lies almost flat.

In Byzantine times Moab appears to have been thickly
peopled. You can stand hardly anywhere on the plateau,
but eight or ten ruined villages, with Byzantine traces on
them, are in sight ; and once there were also several largish
towns with public works, including huge reservoirs for the
winter rains, and not a few other marks of a high level of
culture. The Arab geographers' praise the grapes and
almonds of Moab, and the English survey of the northern
part of the plateau discovered many wine-presses. But
sxcept for a very few about Kerak the vineyards have
vanished and there are almost no other fruit-trees.
Bees abound, thriving on the wild blossoms, and there

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

is (I was told) considerable harvest of honey. One of
the canons, the Callirrhoe of the Greeks, enjoys grtit
wealth of hot springs and streams, and all the canons af-
ford a warm, and at their mouths a tropical shelter
throughout the year. The plateau itself is wind-swept,
healthy in summer and with a somewhat rigorous winter.
The land was never famous for its industries, though the
mosaic pavements discovered among some of its ruins are
wonderful.

Those deeply-marked alternate boundaries of Moab to
the south, the Wady Mo jib, the ancient Arnon, and the
Wady-el-Hesi (or el-Ahsa) have already been noted.
South of the latter are the highlands of Edom, and this
land also is of great fertility with some mineral resources
that have not been worked since the time of the Romans.

Such is the Eastern Range from the Anti-Lebanon
to Mount Seir, fruitful, healthy and in part endowed with
*ome hydraulic possibilities, but cursed by insecurity.
Along its eastern skirts, flattened to the desert, it presents
to every possible government of Syria one of the heaviest
of problems, which only the Romans have been able to
solve — how to defend its opulence from the hungry and
marauding tribes of Arabia. Within recent years the Turk
has attempted this after a fashion of his own, playing off
the Druzes and the Arabs against each other, and pushing
out to the verge of the fertile soil colonies of Bulgar and
Circassian Moslems to quarrel with and cut down the
desert tribes. This policy affects only sections of the long
frontier. 1 Elsewhere the peasants of the Eastern Range
snatch a precarious peace by blackmail to the Arabs. In

*Th« story of Turkish troubles in Hauran during the last thirty
years Is one of melancholy intrigue, slaughter and confusion — Druse
molts, serious defeats of Turkish forces, and then the achievement
of the subjection of the Druses by dividing them against each other.

THE DISCREDITED TURK

such conditions long views and sustained enterprise in

THAT, then, is Syria, over which for four centuries
the Turk has held almost unbroken sway, with every
opportunity to his hand that a fertile soil and a varied,
industrious population can offer to their rulers. We see
the results : the decay of large areas of fertility, the hud-
dling of the more intelligent elements of the population
upon the barer, less profitable shelves of the land, the
depression and embitterment of the rest of the peasantry.

The Turk succeeded to many difficulties, certainly to
more religious and racial antagonisms than rankle in any
Other part of the world. These his merely nominal toler-
ance has poised and provoked against each other for his
own ends; but he has heaped up still greater evils by his
economic neglect and fiscal oppression. Save for some
sporadic efforts, he has been wanting in all for which a
government exists — justice and security, the development
of the natural resources, the organisation of public utilities,
the encouragement of industry and trade — not to speak of
education, in which his endeavours have been limited to a
meagre number of primary schools, and a supply of
fanatical instructors in the Moslem religion. Upon the
social desert, into which he has turned nine-tenths of the
country, the only oases are some hospitals, a few centres
of higher education, the revival here and there of ancient
water-supplies, a couple of good roads and a railway or
two, with, some examples of scientific and successful agri-
culture. But all these are due to other influences or in-
spired by other faiths than his own.

THE DISCREDITED TURK

06 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

The fact receives emphasis from the contrast between
the parts of Syria under the direct rule of the Turk and
the condition of the Lebanon which, since 1860, has had a
Christian Governor and Council beneath a Western Protec-
torate. In spite of enormous natural difficulties, agricul-
ture and many industries flourish in Lebanon ; a number of
excellent roads have been laid across its ridges; and the
population are as many as 160 to the square mile, com-
pared with an average of 34.5 to the square mile through-
out the rest of Syria. The contrast is decisive, and
Lebanon stands as the proof of what all Palestine, may
become when emancipated from Turkish misrule.

The Turk is an alien in Syria, with no native claim to
the soil, and few or no family ties to the people. In Syria
Turkish colonies do not exist; the men of that race are
either officials or soldiers. In short, the Turk has neither
inherited nor earned any rights to Syria. His removal
would present neither social nor economic difficulties.

THE DUTIES OF HIS SUCCESSOR

WHATEVER government, national or international,
succeeds him, the interests that it must be right-
eous, wise and strong enough to secure are clearly the fol-
lowing: the protection and restoration of the once fertile
but now wasted areas of the country along with the
development of other areas whose hitherto untested possi-
bilities are assured by recent experiments on similarly arid
soils in other parts of the world ; the security and freedom
of the native populations; subject to this, the claims of
Israel for a home in the land ; and then the development
of those industries for which so many of the people have
shown a remarkable aptitude, and of those opportunities

THE RECOVERY OF THE LAND 37

for commerce that arise from the central position* of the
country.

It goes without saying that religious liberty must be*
absolute, and that in such a land, and especially at some
of its centres, the task of administering that liberty will
require extraordinary strength, wisdom and tact. Finally,
very important in itself, but subordinate to those other
things, will be the archaeological responsibilities of the new
government : the conservation of the countless monuments
which so rich a history has bequeathed, and a methodical
research into the many fields of the Syrian past, both
above and below ground, that are still unexplored.

THE RECOVERY OF THE LAND

AS for the soil itself, or rather the various soils, it may
be safely said that under care they are capable of a
pitch of productiveness beyond that redched even in the
most prosperous period of Syrian history. I leave North-
ern Syria at the summary descriptions given above and
will write now only of the Lebanons and southward. Let
us discount for the moment the glowing records of what
Southern Syria has been to herself and the world about
her. Let us reckon only her present aspect and products,
with due allowance, of course, for the effects of four
centuries of Turkish neglect and exaction, and the least
conclusion we can draw is one of very fair promise.

Even Judsea, with its washed-out slopes, shattered ter-
races and stony tableland, is not the bleached skeleton that
some hurried travellers have sketched for us. It is still
alive — gaunt, haggard and with bones protruding, because
long starved and maltreated — but alive as even the most
maltreated land abides in God's hands against better times.

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

And Judaea is the least fertile part of Palestine. The
acres of Philistia and Sharon, from which a scientific
farming has recently succeeded in drawing two and even
three times their former yield; the constantly fruitful
vales of Ephraim; the almost unbroken wheat-field of
Esdraelon ; the rich plains and slopes of Galilee; the lower
terraces of Lebanon; the vast orchards of Damascus
watered by the Abana; the copious harvests of Hauran
and Moab, with the wealth of Gilead's cattle — though all
these three provinces lie exposed to the Arabs ; the tropical
soil and climate of the Jordan Valley ; with the olive al-
most everywhere and nowhere fatter than on the lime-
stone debris of Judaea and Galilee — these are the pledges i
of a rich and a varied future for a secure and emancipated
people.

But in addition to these there are steppes and arid bot-
toms in the land, as ready to be transformed by irrigation
or dry-farming as similarly unpromising districts have
proved in California and other western States of America.
To the present writer a journey into South California by
the Mohave desert frequently recalled the aspects of various
approaches into Syria through her encircling and ob-
trusive sands. The same natural difficulties, the same
natural possibilities exist in the one region as in the other;
given the same methods under the direction of Western
experience and it is not hard to believe that the same or i
similar results would be obtained in the East as in the I
West

It is not easy to estimate the possibilities of afforesta-
tion. Caution is necessary with the glowing deductions
that have been made from the data of ancient literature
on the subject. The Old Testament word, rendered forest
in our versions, is often only jungle and never more than
woodland when applied within Palestine proper. The

THE RECOVERY OF THE LAND 89

larger and more valuable timbers appear to have been im-
ported from Lebanon, and it is to Carmel, Lebanon and
■Gilead alone that the sacred writers look for the ideal for-
est — the symbol of glory and pride. Elsewhere were only
scattered woods, with sometimes thicker groves, of ever-
green oak, terebinth, sycomore (only below 1,000 feet),
carob, box, pine and cypress; with, of course, the heavy
and valuable plantations of walnut about Damascus. The
afforestation of Syria was probably never much more than
we find to-day, with perhaps some exceptions such as the
oak-woods of Sharbn that lasted till the Crusades and the
huge palm-groves of the Jordan valley in the Roman
period.

But all this is far from being the measure of the
capacity of Palestine as a timber-bearing country. It
does not appear that a full chance of proving this capacity
has ever been given the land — either by the conservation
of its existing woods or by planting new ones. Under the
Turk the waste has been reckless, and there has been very
little re-planting. On the other hand, a few foreign at-
tempts, chiefly with pines, have succeeded, and there is no
natural obstacle to their extension over considerable areas
unfit for other crops. But it is beyond Palestine proper
that the chief hope of timber must remain. One of the
first tasks of a new government should be the endeavour to
restore the forests of Lebanon by the plantation of the
higher ridges. On the skirts, too, of that mountain and
of Hermon, especially about the sources of Jordan, large
trees flourish, and the pinewoods south of Beyrout show
'what is possible there and on other sandy stretches of the
i coast

[ Except about the Dead Sea and other volcanic districts,
I the mineral resources of Palestine are meagre, and even

40 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND |*

there still uncertain. 1 In the southern Hauran, GiletAj
and the Jordan Valley we have seen unusual energies cfflF
water-power waiting to be applied to agriculture and tbew
handicrafts. Wr
It has been asserted that the decay of Syria is largely ■
due to a change of climate, including a great diminution of W
the rainfall. But of this few signs exist except, at first V
sight, in the perplexing case of the Negeb.* On the other F
hand, there is close correspondence between the relevant Is
data in the Bible and Talmud and the physical facts of h
to-day. That the change, if any, has been so slight as to 1
be negligible is the opinion of the great majority of mod* ^
ern authorities, and the present writer is convinced that it c
is the right opinion. There is a possible explanation even fc
of the Negeb. It is true that a considerable agriculture i
once prevailed here, and that no remains of aqueducts have
been found to enable us to assign the cause to irrigation
from the outside. But the structure of the country allows
the possibility of many wells, and the disappearance from
the Negeb of its ancient prosperity may be due to the loss
of that political security without which the digging of
wells, however industrious, is but a vain thing.

THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHECT

OF the human factors which demand the care of a just
government none — not even the Jews — have a
stronger claim than the native peasantry. In a land whose
history has been so filled with invasion and migration,
the peasants are bound to be of diverse stocks ; and from
district to district they vary in stature, physiognomy, men-

1 So* the present writer 's Jerusalem, Vot L, pp. 330 if.
•See p. 25 of this book.

f THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN 41

feal force and culture. In the main they are Semitic, but
pave sprung from three distinct families of that race:
^the ancient Canaanites who entered Palestine about 2,500
B.C. ; the Arameans who arrived about the same time as
Israel — to-day both pure Arameans or (in Lebanon)
Arameans probably crossed by a Greek strain ; and Arabs
idio have drifted and still drift in from the desert, grad-
ually passing from herding to tillage and from tents to
atone hovels and houses in settled villages, large and
smalL

In parts of Northern Syria there also appear some
Israelites of a long descent in the land. In other parts
an Iranian element is found. In Southern Syria the
native peasants are mostly Moslems, but with a consider-
able number of Christians and Druzea.

But whatever their varieties the feUahin have these
things in common — that they labour, and for centuries
have laboured, on the soil ; that they are therefore the basis
of the people and the state; and that all through history,
but most cruelly under the Turk, their generations have
borne the sorest service and suffering. On them have
fallen most heavily the sirocco, the drought, and the con-
sequent famine; and it is their smaller communities which
have been most badly broken by the plague as well as by
the raids of Arabs from the desert

The abandoned villages of Syria are innumerable;
hardly ever is the traveller out of sight of their ruins ; on
the maps of Palestine no designation is more frequent than
"EHrbet," which means a ruined, forsaken hamlet. An-
cient or recent, these fragments of desolation are the most
damning witnesses to the insecurity of the land under
Oriental rule.

. In recent years the economic condition of the Syrian
peasant has steadily declined. Property in land (which is

4* SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

not wdkf, or devoted to religious purposes) is of two
kinds — tnulk, or "owned," that is freehold, generally- near
to towns or villages, and mostly consisting of gardens or
orchards ; and 'amiriyeh, "Emir's," or "State land," held
in common by the village, and also called "Undivided
land," which is invariably arable and is annually appor-
tioned by lot among the families of the commune. 1 But
in the last half-century this system has been rudely dis-
turbed. After noting the "contrast between the poverty of
the fellahin and the extent and fertility of the land owned
by each village," Laurence Oliphant, who had long oppor-
tunities of observing, traced this paradox to the intolerable
increase of the rents or taxes, aggravated by the novel
exaction of these in cash instead of in kind, with the result
that the peasants are thrown into the hands of the usurer,
who demands from forty to fifty per cent, of interest on
the cash he advances. Consequently much of the private
and communal property of the peasants had at first to be
mortgaged and then surrendered to the alien capitalist
Already in 1886, says Oliphant, the peasants of Esdraelon
and the maritime plain were "rapidly losing proprietorship
in the soil and becoming serfs."

It is true that the new proprietors have introduced im-
provements — better ploughs, hoes, barns, and so forth. But
the State has done nothing for the land, though its revenues
have increased. Outside certain properties of the Sultan,
little attempt at irrigation has been made, no proper roads
have been laid down. In 1891 in southern Hauran I saw
part of a plentiful harvest sacrificed for want of means of
transport In spite of such conditions some villages man-
age to thrive, and some farmers, notably Christians, appear
to be tolerably wealthy. It is difficult to say how far these
exceptions have been rendered possible by susceptibility to

a For references see the present writer's Jerusalem, VoL I., p. 280-

THE NATIVE PEASANTRY OR FELLAHIN 43

bribes on the part of officials whose salaries are always in
arrear.

Estimates of the industry and ability of the Syrian
peasant vary very much. Indolence is often imputed to
him, and the charge, even if it were generally true, would
not be surprising in view of the conditions just sketched.
What stimulus of hope is possible under such a govern-
ment? But the charge is not generally true. The mass
of the peasantry, men and women, have to work hard, for
they work for bare life, and one has frequent occasion to
admire their starved patience and unblessed industry. Vil-
lages differ in character. Some are notoriously dishonest,
malignant to strangers, fanatic against other faiths than
their own. Others are the reverse, peaceable, courteous to
travellers, not self-seeking, and controlled by sheikhs,
whom I have often found gentlemen and helpful. In
some communities Christians, Jews and Moslems live in
amity.

The ignorance of the fellahin is generally deep, but that
is not their fault. On the other hand one discovers a re-
markable shrewdness among them, worthy of far better
opportunities. There is generally a healthy discipline;
the good example of the elders, whether men or women,
is revered and their counsel obeyed. Certain districts pro-
duce capable artisans. There is through the land a con-
siderable body of folk-song, of no mean lyric quality.
Drudges as most of the fellahin must be for the greater
part of the year, into what good spirits, what jest and song
and dance they will burst at harvest and other festivals !
I Mr. Hogarth says :* "There is no more enterprising, no
1 keener intellect in the Nearer East than the Syrian of the
n Fringe ... the inhabitants of the Lebanon and the
A Syrian littoral." He ascribes this excellence to the in-

*| 1 The Nearer East, p. 194.

44 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

creased quality of the staples of life; "where the 'Arab*
(to use the ethnic widely) lives under conditions similar
to the Greek he resembles him at many points, both
physical and mentaL" But may not this excellence be
partly due to the crossing of the Semite by a Greek strain?
And in the Lebanon we cannot forget what is more cer-
tain, the comparative f reedom and security enjoyed by its
inhabitants for two generations. Their superiority is the
pledge of a general rise in the moral and mental level of
the Syrian peasantry as a whole, when those blessings
shall have been extended to all the land by a strong and a
just government

THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS

THE claim of the modern Jew to a "national home" in
Palestine is threefold: — by right of the history of
hiB fathers, by right of his own devotion to the ideal of a
national life, and by right of his recent successful exer-
tions on the soil. To assist the fulfilment of his ideal is
only a part of what the civilised world owes to the Jew,
because of his spiritual service to mankind and because of
the treatment he has suffered from other races since he
was driven from his land. In the face of inconceivable
difficulties the Jew (as we have seen) has given proof of
his practical ability not only to develop the resources of
Palestine but thereby to enable it to contribute once more
to the general interests of civilisation, as from its position
and fertility it is so well-fitted to do.

We must not forget to do justice to the German settlers
at Haifa and on Sharon, the pioneers of revived agricul-
ture in Syria, Laurence Oliphant, who for a number of
years was their neighbour, bears witness to their honesty,

i THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 46

their thoroughness, and the influence of their example on
the natives. But according even to their friends the Turks,
the effect of the work of the Germans has been merely
local. In agricultural results and in influence on the
peasantry they have been far outdone by the Jewish colon-
ists on the Maritime Plain and in other districts. 1

It is not surprising, therefore, that during the last
twenty years there has been a rapid growth of the idea
of "Palestine for the Jews" among both themselves and
other peoples. The labours of Dr. Herzl and the influence
of the Zionist* Congress in Basle in 1897, over which he
presided, gave the movement its strongest spiritual impetus
from within Jewry. But both its hopes and many of its
immediate claims have received an increasing amount of
recognition from the Press and from responsible states-
men among the great Powers. It is not a few years ago
that Lord Cromer declared that "Zionism is fast becoming
a practical issue."

But if practical before the war it has become immensely
more so as the war has gone on. Since the Turk, in any
case an alien and a discredited alien has further shaken
his hold on Syria by his alliance with the enemies of
civilisation, the hopes of the Jews and the sympathies of
the great Powers have naturally ripened. With the Bel-
gians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Roumanians, and Ar-
menians, the Jews have been recognised as one of the weak
peoples for whose national freedom the Allies are battling.
Their right to "a home" in Palestine with some degree of
autonomy has been affirmed by democratic parties in Great
Britain, in other European countries, and in America;
and has been acknowledged by more than one of the Allied
Governments.

Even in Germany the strength of the Jewish claims
1 See above, p. 20.

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAKf)

upon Palestine is admitted — always, of course, with re-
spect to Germany's bonds to her Turkish ally. With the
exception of the Roman Catholic organs, the German
Press has welcomed the prospect of a large return of the
Jews to the Holy Land on the grounds that "Jews have
already learned to support themselves there," that their
settlement "would benefit the native Arabs" (sic), that
"the Turks have always been tolerant of Jews," and that
Jews have ever been disposed to be loyal citizens of the
Turkish Empire and "can be of economic advantage to it."
On the other hand in Italy Baron Sonnino has pronounced
that "Palestine must be freed from the Turkish yoke ; once
so freed it would be neutralised and internationalised, and
declared aji independent State" with due regard of course
to Jewish rights.

But the most momentous factor in the Zionist move-
ment is Mr. Balfour's declaration on behalf of the British
Government that "it views with favour the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and
will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement
of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall
be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights
of non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and
political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

So far has the movement progressed. Its strength is
clear, its prospects bright— especially since the capture of
Jerusalem by a British force— and the devotion to its
ideals of large numbers of Jews undoubted. It has the
sympathy of the Allied Powers as of their peoples behind
them, and even the Master of the Turk acknowledges that
a place must be found for the Jews within the political
future of Syria. Yet even so, one must be impressed
with the vagueness which still envelopes the hopes and
purposes of Zionism. It is clear that Jews are ready, and

THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS

±7

: must be allowed, to settle in Palestine, in very greatly in-
[ creased numbers, for the cultivation of the soil (of their
fitness for which they have given solid proof) and with a
certain degree of autonomy, free to express their "na-
tional" as well as their religious and economic aspirations.

Beyond this and the firm conditions happily laid down
by the British Government, nothing is yet definite. How-
ever deserving of our sympathy, the Jewish claims have
not been so thought out in face of the present facts of Pal-
estine as to command our unqualified support. The un-
certainty is not only due to the fact that the war is un-
finished and the political future of Syria is still in sus-
pense, nor only to the difficult international questions that
will have to be settled, if and when the Turkish power in
Syria is abolished.

The vagueness is also due to division of opinion among
the Jews themselves, and to the fact that in enthusiasm
for the undoubted justice of their aspirations Zionists
appear to ignore or at best unduly to depreciate the
economic and social difficulties in the way of a "national"
Jewish restoration, and in particular that the very grave
questions of the area of the Jewish home and of its fron-
tiers have not been as yet even fully stated, far less dis-
cussed or answered. To answer these questions is not
within the scope of this essay ; but in the interest of the
education of the public it is necessary to endeavour to
state them. We do so first by inquiring more exactly
what are the Jewish aspirations, and then by observing
how they are encountered and affected by the existing
conditions of Palestine, physical and social.

A portion of British Jewry, in number a minority, but
of intellectual force and apparently supported by a body
of Jewish opinion in America, looks for the establishment
in Palestine of a community of Jews which, while eco-

48 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

nomically independent, shall exist mainly for religious pur-
poses, "a source of inspiration to the whole of Jewry"—
the Jewish communities throughout the rest of the world
meantime continuing to cultivate "complete social and
political identification with the nations among whom they
dwell."

This, of course, is far short of the "national" ideal of
the Zionists. It is the old controversy whether the test
of a Jew is his religion or his nationality. But it is
complicated by the fact that while the limitation of Jewish
hopes of Palestine to a Jewish community existing there
for mainly religious purposes is advocated by the less rig-
orous parties In Judaism, the Zionist demand for the
restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine — ''for
Judaism is not only a creed but a nationality" — is sup-
ported by parties ardently orthodox and many of them
profoundly spiritual

Nor are the Zionists themselves of one mind. There
are the extremely political Zionists, who demand the crea-
tion of an autonomous Jewish state under international
guarantees, and offer Belgium as an example of what they
mean. But moderate, or, as they call themselves, "prac-
tical," Zionists, realising that the Jews now are, and for
some time must still be, a minority in Palestine, and "pre-
ferring the line of safe and sure development," disclaim
the idea of an independent Jewish state, and plead only
for the restoration of their people as a nationality.

As one has said of the Zionist Congress : "It was not
to establish a Jewish State to-day or to-morrow that we
went to Basle, but to proclaim aloud to the whole world*.
'The Jewish people still lives and wants to live.' " But
this restoration to Palestine, which "practical" Zionists
demand, is not the restoration of a vast number of indi-
vidual Jews as free oitizens of whatever state may be

THE CLAIMS OF THE JEWS 49

iblished there, nor merely the extension of the present
system of Jewish colonies owning scattered districts with
i freedom to manage their own business and local affairs.
It is the establishment of the Jews as a nation, "under
Jewish law, in possession of the whole of the Jewish land,"
and using, of course, the Hebrew language. Their own
words are "a Jewish Palestine," "the establishment of a
Jewish national home" (which appears also in Mr. Bal-
four's declaration), "a home for Judaism, for Jewish civ-
ilisation as well for some millions of Jews, in the ancient
land of IsraeL" Or again, "We want Palestine, the whole
country, to be the home of the Jews, and we want to live
under our own laws, not indeed with the outward shell
of a State, but with the inner kernel of free and independ-
ent institutions."

It would not be at all fair to interpret this desire as one
for all the blessings, without any of the heaviest respon-
sibilities, of nationality. The desire is most natural —
perhaps the only one possible— to a people who, while
heroically preserving their national spirit through eighteen
centuries of dispersion and many persecutions, are with-
out the experience or the means required for government
and its international duties. Towards the fulfilment -of a
national restoration Zionists reckon, not without reason, on
the migration of millions of Jews to Palestine. However
Jewry may be divided in opinion as to the shape which
that restoration should take, there is little doubt that, given
freedom to return and possess land under their own laws,
Jews would resort to Palestine in sufficient numbers to
form a nation. Moreover, there is room for them in the
country; from what we have seen its capacity to support
them is not to be denied, nor, as their colonies have shown,
can we doubt their ability to develop this.

It is also natural that at this stage of the war Jewish

50 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

opinions should not be agreed as to what is to be the
supreme power in Palestine. Some Zionists, perhaps the
wisest, refrain from making any proposals. Others con-
ceive of a wide but undefined international suzerainty,
others of a protectorate by a single great Power, or of a
condominium by two or three; while some non-Jewish
writers suggest that this should be assumed by France,
Italy and Britain.

But many Jews deprecate the idea of a condominium,
the risks and failures of which have been experienced else-
where, and claim that the protectorate must be single.
Great Britain and the United States have each been
named as the Power most desirable in the circumstances,
British Jews and in particular the British Palestine
Society strongly pleading for the former. Their phrase
is "a free nationality within the British Empire" ; their
reasons, that free nationalities, prosperous and contented,
already exist within that Empire — the Jewish would only
be one more.

To complete this account of Jewish opinion it is neces-
sary to add that so*ne Zionists also appeal to British in-
terests. They seek to show that the Judsean plateau is
"the needed bulwark of the Suez Canal," "the outer bas-
tion of Egrpt," and that "the natural buffer-state to Egypt
is Palestine."

Such are the aspirations of the Zionists and the plans
of some of them. How do they bear upon the «i^ng
facts of the situation?

RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS

EELIGIOUS QUESTIONS

WE may take first the religious facts, though, except
in one respect, that of the holy places, the religious
facts are not the most difficult or acute. Were Jewish
influence, social and political, to become predominant in
Palestine — if only through sheer force of numbers — I do
not think it would prove intolerant to other creeds. Deli-
cate and even dangerous as the relations of religions have
always been in Syria, and fanatic against other faiths as
fractions of the Jewish population might prove to be, the
general spirit of the modern race is tolerant, and with
international guarantees for religious liberty, can be
trusted to subdue the passion or arrogance of groups of
its own people.

The particular question of the sacred places is more
dangerous; it will always be difficult whatever race or
faith may prevail in the land. 1 How would Jewish in-
fluence treat it? I have seen general promises by Zionists
on the subject. But it is when one comes to details that
the danger first rises. You may make Jerusalem an in-
ternational, a free or neutral, city, with rights equal to
Christians, Jews and Moslems. But how does the Jew
propose to decide between himself and the Moslem the
question of the possession or of the use of the sacred
Rock beneath the Mosque of Omar, or of the Mosque at
Hebron?

*Se* above, p. 5.

M SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

ECONOMIC QUESTIONS

THESE are other and even more serious difficulties
connected with the restoration of the Jews to Pales-
tine which must be faced before the political future of
that country and of those who have claims upon it is
determined* There is the case of the native fellahuu
We have seen what their stake in the land is, what rights
in the soil they have earned, what claims their centuries
of service and suffering give them upon the sympathies
of the free democracies by whom their fate will have to
be decided. 1

With regard to these claims, it is not enough to say,
as some Zionists have done, that there is room in the land
both for the "Arabs" (as Zionists erroneously call them)
and for the Jews. When Jewish writers claim "the
whole country for the Jews," when they write of "the
re-settlement and rebirth of Palestine" as "the national
centre" of "the Jewish nation," have they realised the
economic and social disturbances which the execution of
this claim would involve ? ft is useless to compare the
claims of the Jews on Palestine with the rights of the
Belgians to Belgium. When the Belgians are restored to
their land it will not be at the risks of a native peasantry
different from themselves, who have owned and lived by
its soil for centuries. How do Zionists propose to pre-
serve the legal rights and secure the social health of the
fellahin, or to prevent the continuation of that process of
buying and crushing them out of their communal property,
by which so many have already been reduced to the posi-
tion of serfs ? It is no duty of the present writer to an-
swer these questions ; but while Jewish hopes are high and
'See above, p. 40 ff.

THE LIMITS OP THE JEWISH AREA 53

legitimately high, it is right to point out what difficulties
lie in the way of their equitable fulfilment, and what
very serious economic details have still to be thought
out.

In illustration, an experience may be quoted. On
visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the'
north-east of the land, round which a high wall had
been built by the munificent patron, I found the colo-
nists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning,
while groups of fellahin at a poor wage did the cultiva-
tion for them. I said that this was surely not the inten-
tion of their patron in helping them to settle on land of
their own. A Jew replied to me in German: "Is it
not written: The. sons of the alien shall be your plowmen
and vinedressers?' 1

I know that such delinquencies have become the ex-
ceptions in the Jewish colonisation of Palestine, but they
are symptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded
against When we hear that Jews desire to live under
their own laws in Palestine, and rightly sympathise with
"^ttarf ctesire, we must at the same time take sureties that
Ulese laws shall not include those of the Old Testament
^which might encourage base* Jews to the "sweating" of
natives as hewers of wood and drawers of water.

THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AEEA

AGAIN* there is the question of the limits of the Jew-
ish area with all the difficulties it raises, both ethnic
and strategic. Zionists claim for the Jews "the whole
oountry" of Palestine; and one writer adds: "there must
be no partition of Palestine; the Jew in Galilee must
not be cut off by an international frontier from the Jew
in Jerusalem." But what is Palestine? Save under the

54 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

Romans, the name has never had exact borders ; to-day it
is perhaps more vaguely applied than at any other time.

Which of the possible lines of division we have seen
round and across Syria are to be the frontiers of the
new Syria, when the Turk is forced to relinguish the
land and some other Power or Powers assume authority ?
And when these frontiers have been settled, on ethnic and
military considerations, how much of what they embrace
is to belong to the Jewish people as a nationality, and to
be administered under Jewish law?

Some regions may at once be ruled out of the Jewish
sphere; others are doubtful; others we cannot exclude.
There is Middle Syria between two definite borders, the
Nahr el-Kebir on the north and the Nahr el-Kasimiyeh,
and containing the Lebanon. What rights, historical or
moral, have the Jews to this? For at least fifteen cen-
turies Lebanon has been Christian territory, and as we
have seen has enjoyed since 1860 a separate constitu-
tion with a Christian governor under the protection of
the Powers of Europe. The population is about 400,000,
of whom 320,000 are Christians, 50,000 Druses «nd the
rest Moslems^ with practically no Jews. There is Beyrout
with a population of over 100,000, of wham two-thirtfe
are Christian and the rest Moslem. There is also the
Phoenician coast south of the Kasimiyeh without a single
memory of Jewish occupation or of the influence of Jew-
ish culture. There is Eastern Palestine separated from
Galilee and Judaea by the deep trench of the Jordan and
Dead Sea. What is the evidence of history as to Jewish
rights over these eastern provinces?

Except when Herod had the legions of Rome behind
him the Jewish nation failed to exercise authority or
keep order in Hauran in parts of Gilead and in Moab.
Their conquests were temporary, their settlements incon-

THE LIMITS OF THE JEWISH AREA 55

stant. The civilisation of those provinces was never Jew-
ish but Greek, Roman or Byzantine; and the last was
long ensured by tribes of Christian Arabs — wardens of
the marches — who themselves developed an impressive cul-
ture and have left, standing to this day on the desert-
margins, monuments of their ability and character. These
Arab Christians have not died out ; scattered communities
of them still endure east of the Jordan, as far south as
Kerak, at other points in Moab and Gilead, and even in
Hauran and on the Druze-Mountain. Again, there is the
Nqgeb, where the only remains of settled life are By-
zantine. There is Philistia, only occasionally in Jewish
hands.

There is Damascus itself, the largest city and the
real metropolis of Syria, in which the Jew never had
rights except the right to trade; 'and the moral claims
to predominance are shared by the Christian and the
Moslem. 1

Judaea, Samaria and Galilee are left. Is the whole
of each of these to be the area of the Jewish "national
home"? The religious history of Jerusalem and the
devotion to her of so many living faiths point to the
conclusion that the city and its territory should be abso-
lutely neutral under international guarantees. But if
the rest of Western Palestine be given back to the Jewish
people as a people, what of the Christian communities
within it, especially in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood
—where they have given as good proof as many Jewish
colonists of their power to farm the soil — and in Nazareth
and its neighbourhood, also at other points. Napoleon
when he camped on Esdraelon was impressed by the num-
bers of Christians from Galilee who came to do him
homage; since then they have not diminished.

s See above, p. 30.

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

Thus the claims of the Zionists, strong though they
be, raise larger and more detailed questions than their
copious literature has discussed or even stated. The
Zionist rightly appeals to history; but his appeal must
be decided on wider and more complicated considera-
tions than he advances — not only the Jewish associations
and achievements in Palestine, but Jewish limitations
and failures as well, along with the rights that other races
and faiths have undoubtedly earned in that doubly and
trebly sacred land.

It is not true that "Palestine is the national home of
the Jewish people and of no other people/' It is not
correct to call its non-Jewish inhabitants "Arabs," or to
say that "they have left no image of their spirit and
made no history — except in the great Mosque." We
may rule out the Franks, their brief discipline of Syria
and the many monuments of this that remain. But what
of the native Christians, Syrian and Greek i They doubt*
less claim that their faith is the moral heir of all that was
best in ancient Judaism.

If agreement on that question is impossible, there re-
mains the other, which we cannot evade, of the fac* : df
the living Christian communities. Have they not been aa
long in possession of their portions of the land « ever
the Jews were ? Is not Palestine the birthplace of their
faith also and its fields as sacred to Christians as to Jews?
Has Christianity "made no history" and "left no image
of its spirit" on the Holy Land ?

These are legitimate questions stirred by the claims
of Zionism, but the Zionists have not yet fully faced them.
In short, the Jewish question in the Holy Land cannot be
decided by itself, nor merely upon general assurances
that "the rights of other creeds and races will be re-
spected" under Jewish dominance. Obviously a very great

THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA 67

deal of difficult detail has still to be thought out by the
Powers of Europe — and the democracies of Europe edu-
cated in the thinking thereof — before the future of Syria
can be settled on lines of justice and security for all na-
tions and creeds alike.

At this stage it is premature to attempt a full answer to
the question. But our survey of the land has made some
outlines more or less clear.

The southern border of Syria, from time immemorial,
has been a line drawn from el-Arish on the coast to the
head of the Gulf of Akaba — all the desert beyond has
been regarded as belonging to Egypt. Under the condi-
tions of ancient and mediaeval warfare, and indeed down
to the time of Napoleon, this desert was considered as
strong a barrier and bulwark as is possible between two
States. In Napoleon's own words: "De tous les obstacles
qui peuvent oouvrir les frontieres des empires un d6sert
pareil & celui-ci est incontestablement le plus grand • . .
car, si on a tant de difficult^ & transporter les vivres
d'une armSe que rarement on y rfiussit completement,
cette difficulty devient vingt fois plus grande, quand il
faut trainer avec soi Peau, les fourrages et le bois, trois
choses d'un grand poids, tr&s difficiles & transporter et
qu'ordinairement les armies trouvent sur les lieux."

Modern means of transport have indeed rendered the
Syro-Egyptian desert somewhat leas formidable; yet
even so we may doubt the Zionists' contention (by which
they appeal to British interests) that Egypt and the Suez

•TV ti<

58 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

Canal require "a buffer state" in Palestine, and more
particularly on the Judaean plateau. And, besides, if this
State is created, where is its own northern frontier to
run? Hardly over Esdraelon, for that, as we have seen,
is neither a political nor a strategic border. 1 If the next
natural line were chosen, the Nahr-el-Kasimiyeh, 2 then
"the buffer State" would itself require a buffer, for its
northern frontier would run defenceless against the foot
of a great mountain-wall. But in any case the aignxnent
for a Judaean buffer to Egypt is not conclusive. A friendly
State in southern Syria would indeed be a support, but not
an indispensable support, to the security of the Canal or
of Egypt.

If Lebanon, or the Lebanons, be created a Christian
province which they essentially are, and already in 1860
were recognised to be by the Great Powers of Europe, the
natural boundaries would be those' which have frequently
formed political frontiers — the Nahr-el-Kebir to the north
and the Nahr*el-Kasimiyeh on the south; and Bey rout
would have to be brought in. But how is Damascus to
be related to such a province? Bound to the Lebanons
by many ties of neighbourhood and trade, as well as by
the blood of a large part of its population, Damascus car-
ries far wider responsibilities than these both to the rest
of Syria and to Arabia, and therefore in any reconstruc-
tion of the nearer East stands a problem by itself.

North of the Lebanons the possible frontiers are two 8
— first the westward bend of the Orontes to the sea, and
then the Taurus itself. But the questions they raise,
with the kindred question of Aleppo, depend for their
answers on the settlement of the political future of Meso-

*See above, p. 13.
•See above, p. 13.
•See above, pp. 13, 21.

THE FRONTIERS OF NEW SYRIA

potamia — a subject beyond the scope of our present in-
[ cpriry.

Finally, there is the Eastern frontier. This can hard-
ly be the Jordan-Orontes Valley. It is impossible to
conceive of the provinces over Jordan and the Orontes
as excluded from the New Syria. But if they are in-
cluded her government must be of a power sufficient to
render their open borders on the desert secure against
tribes of whom there can be no hope for some time that
they will respect civilisation's ideals of disarmament.
Even if a stable government be founded in the Hejaz, it
cannot be relied on as able to control the warrior hordes
of Northern Arabia. The tribes which rove between
Palestine and the Euphrates reckon their fighting-men
by many scores of thousands; a very large number of
whom are armed with Martini-Henry and other modern
rifles.

For the peace and prosperity of Syria a strong Eastern
frontier down the desert is essential. And is Edom to
come within this frontier or to be left to the Arab, when
the Turk is removed? The last European government
which held Western Palestine, that of the Crusaders,
found it necessary to build fortresses in the Edomite high-
lands and to push its arms by that direction as far as the
Gulf of Akaba — as the Romans did before it.

All this is enough to make clear that the Power or
Powers, to whom the political future of Syria falls will
have problems before them far more serious than any
i ihat Britain has had to solve in Egypt, and quite a$
I heavy as those which gather along the northern and north-
I western frontiers of the Indian Empire.

SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND

EPILOGUE

AS I write these last paragraphs the news comes in
of the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turk on the
9th December by a British force, including troops from •
all the British Dominions over the seas and Indian Mos- '
lems, as well as French and Italian detachments. It was, '
besides, the very day on which Jews celebrate the anni- •
versary of her deliverance by Judas Maccabeus. 1
In his solemn entry to the Holy City the British Gen- *
eral was accompanied by the attaches of France, Italy, and
the United States of America. Guardians were appointed ■
for all the Christian sanctuaries. The Indian Moslems
were put in charge of the Mosque of Omar, and the
hereditary Moslem custodians of the gates of the Holy
Sepulchre were requested to continue their accustomed
duties in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the
Khalif Omar'who protected that Church.

May this wonderful beginning — even if it is not fol-
lowed by the harmless conquest of the rest of the Holy
Land — be the earnest of the creation, for the first time
on earth, of a government devoted wholly to Peace, with
no temptation to war in itself and no provocation to
other States, because founded by the agreement and sol-
emn guarantees of all peoples to whom the land is dear
and holy. What fitter soil could be dedicated to this
ideal, which we pray to be gradually fulfilled all the world
over, than that on which the coming of the Prince of
Peace was predicted, on which He was born and suffered
and died, that He might draw all men to Himself and to
one another !

In these pages we have been engaged with the merely
material foundations, resources, and securities of the New

EPILOGUE

Syria. Wide and rich as they are, pregnant with the
fullest promise to the land and its various peoples, they
cannot avail without the devotion of these peoples, and
of the Western Governments and democracies which sup-
port them, to those principles and ideals of which the
land's sons have been the prophets to mankind. In the
words of one of them — until the Spirit be poured from
on high and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the
work of righteousness be peace and the effect of righteous*
ness quietness and confidence for ever; and My people shall
abide in a peaceable habitation and in sure dwellings and
m quiet resting places. Then shall it be confidently said,
Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the
Lord is risen upon thee !

yjAv*? 10,1

I By a German, ^u^or of / Accw

l An arraimment in pven more cogent form than "I Acct «J
P^ySm-iS: ol Germany^* AwWj^ m L ^ ,

!re r.DCAT fPlMF AND ITS MORAL By J. Selden Willr
l k volume which is an invaluable Hbrary. An Ulnwinatmg H

ibe C^ documentary literature of the war. 8vo.
IIj GIUM IN WAR TIME 8> Commanifanl Oe Cerfacne
1 ' Trt „| ited | [C ,m «t« Fri^b Edition fe r Btnati «i«U

The authoritative book essential to an understanding of Uu Mm

worw«gi*» ~i Wwtrationa> map8 ao d facwmileft. 8ro Net,
i E RA TTLE OF THE SOMME By Joh i Bac

Uiyrr RtidW* account Is a clear and brilliant presentation
S£mS^S% tactical and ^d^jw
™r 5 ta^/^Springfield Rcyubtm niustratsd, 12a
IAND OF DEEPENING SHADOW ByD.Thoma*

Revealing the Germany of fact
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KCCUSB1 a* accuse t)

true

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An arraignment G «" B * n ° f *• G- SE. W fe

Facts every neutral should know. , j , _ *

r.ppM AN TERROR IN FRANCE By Arnold J. Toyn
GERMAN TERROR IN Bl-LGIUM By Arnold J
ht> facts he places before his readers, &*gg*£L w ;

were, nernelrated systematically, deliberately .
^whKo^ntry was Invaded wi«ta*Jg«^
iMpHia Public Ledger* ,

pJ rM pirrtlRES FROM FRANCE * y jhwo* wmi™ H

. * t> IS >1 . — 3 «li»h I

E iSS

A glowing be
attractive Brit

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filled with a deep love
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OF WAR

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TN THE FIELD OF MERCY By France
"IN THE FIELD Of HONOUR B* Front**
e, intlmatr, classic narrative wwen has *g**J
istlnsrulahed books produced sincouie |^ur

H. DO RAN COMPANY" » Ne

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